The Shape-Changer's Wife
Page 18
She had told him she wanted to remember and so he let her remember, but he did not think it would take any spell of his to make her forget. As for himself, no magician in the world would be able to take this memory from his mind; it had patterned itself over the intricate whorls and ridges of his brain and would be a part of him till the day he died. He stood looking for one long moment at the single willow in the King’s Grove, which was more beautiful than any object he had ever seen; then he stooped to retrieve something that had fallen from her when she changed. It was the gold necklace he had given her, which she had worn for the past four days and had no use for now. Aubrey pocketed it and turned away, and made his way as quickly as he could back past the guards and out of the grove of trees.
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Epilogue
SOME SAY THAT is the end of the story, and some say it is not. For while much is known of Aubrey’s life, he who became known as the Gifted, much still lies within the realm of myth and speculation. Some say he never again laid eyes on the woman known as Lilith and that she remained as he had changed her until the king’s forest burned down and all life within it perished. Others say that is not so.
These eager romantics will tell you that, as the forest took fire, and one by one the trees succumbed, spicy cedar lending its burning fragrance to the hot pitch of the pine, one tree did not burn when the flames reached it. That tree shook in the acrid breath of the approaching fire, and collapsed in upon itself, and remembered, when the need was upon it to remember, how to be a woman and how to run. And that woman escaped the conflagration that destroyed every other living thing in the King’s Grove; and she stole clothes from the first peasant’s hut she came to, unwatched and untended; and she made her way slowly from village to village, stealing food and remembering the language, until she reached a town that was large enough to have news. They say that there she inquired as to the whereabouts of a wizard named Aubrey, and that she traveled to the place where he lived, which was a thousand miles and two kingdoms from the grove where she had started. And that they were reunited that one time and never again, for they were never again parted from that day until the day they died.
It is true, as these storytellers say, that the King’s Grove burned down; and it is true that in his later years Aubrey the Gifted had with him at all times a woman companion who was reputed to be green-eyed and strange. Any record of the magician’s life will give you these facts. But as to the woman’s identity, there are no clues. None of the histories record her name, and it is hard to believe that a spell spoken by Aubrey the Gifted could be so easily overturned. Moreover, she had once preferred the risk of death to the prospect of life as a woman, and she had had many years to forget that she had once had feet and could run from the threatened fire. But the stories persist, and no scholar has definitely refuted them.
As for the great magician, Glyrenden, the stories are even stranger. It is said that you can spend your whole life quartering the king’s domain and never yet come across the wizard’s remains. That whole forested area, to this day still wild and nearly impenetrable, is so overgrown that it is impossible to find in it any of the paths and roadways that once existed. The forest has taken its revenge on Glyrenden, the villagers say, and obliterated all traces of his existence, so that even those who have heard about him from others who have heard about him cannot prove he ever once lived and breathed and cast malicious spells; and they cannot be inspired to emulate a man who has disappeared so entirely from the memory of the earth.
Sharon Shinn won the William Crawford Award for Achievement in Fantasy and was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. She lives in St. Louis.
Ace Books by Sharon Shinn
ARCHANGEL
JOVAH’S ANGEL
THE ALLELUIA FILES
ANGELICA
WRAPT IN CRYSTAL
THE SHAPE-CHANGER’S WIFE
HEART OF GOLD
SUMMERS AT CASTLE AUBURN
JENNA STARBORN